How Sweet It ISN'T!

Prologue

With the beginning of Passover today, we quote
the late Tom Stockley, whose words of wine
wisdom have been extinguished by the recent
Alaska Airlines crash...

"I've been looking into the kosher wines
available today. Compared to the days when
about all one could find were sweet, syrupy
wines with a screw cap, we've come a long way."

British expert Stephen Brook agrees
in the Wines of California...
"Kosher wines used to be ultra-sweet treacly
blends that were scarcely drinkable. Since the
early 1980s excellent kosher table wines have
been available from a handful of specialist
wineries in California. The pioneer was Ernie
Weir of Hagafen (hu-GAF-en) Cellars, which he
established in Napa in l979."

Ernie Weir

Hagafen Cellars

The Rest of the Story

However, Ernie was not the first to make California
kosher. Prof. Thomas Pinney tells us that honor
apparently goes to a Bavarian Jew named Benjamin
Dreyfus. In the wake of the Gold Rush, he came
north to San Francisco to promote his Los Angeles
wines, managed a cellar there, and in 1864 made
Kosher wine.

Another pioneer was Louis M. Martini. During
Prohibition in the 1920s home winemaking was legal.
So he made and sold to the public a grape concentrate
aptly named "Forbidden Fruit." Also, he made the
legal medicinal and sacramental wines. with a rabbi
living on the grounds, they "even made kosher wine."

There was a trickle of dry kosher wine produced
after Prohibition but it died out and for decades
the only available koshers were those sweet,
screw-cap specials.

The Impossible Dream

Then, 30 years ago, a young student with big ideas
and a small wallett had an impossible dream.
Here's how he decribed it to me on March 24, 1988.

In the 1970s, as I completed my studies at
U.C.-Davis, I began to dream of making the best
quality Napa Valley wines using modern methods but
infused with my Jewish cultural identity. Now, a
decade later, we are about to release our first Reserve
Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, both kosher.

That was many wines and many medals ago.
Success has been so great that in a few months
the handsome new Hagafen ("vine" in Hebrew)
winery will open, ready to process the year 2000 crush.

One of the newest triumphs is Ernie's first Merlot, our...

Wine of the Day

1997 Hagafen Merlot, Napa Valley
Accolades—California State Fair Competition (if you have
ever been there, you know it
is huge and impeccably objective with top judges)

Postscript

We've covered kosher wine criteria in past
WineDays, including these dates and titles.
April 23, 1997 - "A Fine Wine for Passover" ("kosher" means "correct.")
October 3, 1997 - "The Story of Kosher Wine" (the
accidental start of sweet kosher wine in New York City)

Fred McMillin, a veteran wine writer, has taught wine history
for 30 years on three continents. He currently teaches wine
courses at San Francisco State and San Francisco City College.
In 1995, the Academy of Wine Communications honored Fred
with one of only 22 Certificates of Commendation awarded
to American wine writers.